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Visual Aids: Cute Kittens Increase Attention and Productivity

Think all of those cat ladies browsing Cute Overload are just wasting their time? You’re wrong.

They’re really preparing to out-compete you. A recent study shows that people are more productive when they’ve been looking at pictures of cute animals. As reported by the Washington Post:

…researchers at Hiroshima University recently conducted a study where they showed university students pictures of baby animals before completing various tasks. What they found, in research published today, was that those who saw the baby animal pictures did more productive work after seeing those photographs – even more than those who saw a picture of an adult animal or a pleasant food.

Sometimes these esoteric studies seem utterly ridiculous, but I totally buy this one. If nothing else, I think that looking at cute images serves to grab a viewer’s attention and provoke an emotional response that makes them more likely to focus on a task or remember a presentation targeted at them. I’m not saying that kitty pictures are appropriate for every presentation. But anything that makes an audience laugh or feel good can be very effective.

One of the most successful presentations I’ve ever done is one that almost never happened. I spent a couple of years trying to get a presentation I called “The Worst Mistake I Ever Made” approved at a conference. The idea was that panelists would talk about what they’d learned from their mistakes and tell the audience what they’d change if they had it all to do over again. But conference organizers kept telling me it was too negative.

So when I finally got it accepted I inserted pictures of cute baby animals throughout the deck of slides. I thought it would add some humor, but I was also being a bit of a jerk. After talking about a failed project I’d say something like, “Is that too depressing? Well here’s a picture of a baby panda.” And people loved it. The presentation got the best evaluations of any talk from the week-long conference and I still have people tell me how much they enjoyed it years later.

Should you put a picture of a baby walrus in your financial presentations? Probably not. But anything you can do to entertain your audience and make them enjoy being there will also make your presentation interesting and memorable. It’s up to you to determine what’s appropriate within the context of your talk.